Abby's path to the page was long and nonlinear, but that’s what makes it a good story. She got into the work of brand writing with more material than someone who went straight through. In this conversation, we talk about the tension between writing and “writing theater,” the fragmentation of voice online, and what it takes to build something more personal alongside commercial work.

‍

Where do you live and where are you from?

I live in Brooklyn, New York, but I’m originally (and very proudly) from the Jersey Shore.

Tell us about your current role?

I’ve worked in tech for five years and have spent the last two as a Senior Copywriter, writing everything and anything from campaign concepts to video scripts to in-app pop-ups (sorry!) 

You spent years working in talent and influencer marketing before you made the pivot to copy. What did being that close to branding and copywriting — without actually doing it — teach you and how has it helped in your career?

As a casting director, I was always considering our hero’s unique journey and why it made sense for the brand to be a medium for it.

Narrative is threaded into every part of marketing, whether we realize it or not. And when it comes to people in particular – someone serving as a spokesperson or brand ambassador – the content we’re creating has to merge messages from both the person and the brand in a natural way, otherwise we’re just selling, not storytelling.

My job was to figure out how to blend two distinct stories into something cohesive and resonant, which taught me to always center personal voice and perspective in my copywriting. At the end of the day, that authenticity is what people really connect to.

You mentioned the phrase “writing theater” in our conversation, which is the performance of a writing practice without the actual writing. Where do you see it showing up most and do you ever catch yourself doing it?

“Writing theater” is such a fallback for me because it shows up when I’m spending a lot of time creating structures or processes around my writing practice. It’s so much fun to build the world and play around with what the parameters of whatever I want to write should be – I can literally do that all day long. And it’s funny because it usually happens for something I want to write the most, like a new chapter for my novel or a manifesto for a campaign concept.

But eventually I have to check myself and say: are you writing or are you performing the act of writing? Because ultimately, it’s just me running away from the vulnerability it takes to put words on the page. At its core, “writing theater” is a fear-based behavior, not the act of preparation I tell myself it is. And catching myself doing it is always this lightbulb moment where I’m like … hmm. I sat down to write two hours ago, but I’m looking at a mind map or bullet points or a whole character profile, not any actual prose or storytelling. That’s when I know I have to zoom out and lock in for real.

You recently finished an MFA program - what led you to that decision and what advice do you have for other folks who are considering it? 

I’ve always wanted to go back to school because I really love learning - and again, this is probably more of that “writing theater” creeping in – but I just love to research and investigate things before I start them. 

Nigerian culture is also very pro graduate schooling, so a master’s was always something I knew both I and my family wanted me to do. But an MBA or law school or medical school never felt like the right thing. And I kind of had this revelation when I came across a book called The Creative Writing MFA Handbook and just realized … oh, if I go back to school, it doesn’t have to be what anyone else wants me to do it for. It can be for something I truly love, and what I love is writing. 

I don’t know why it took that book to unlock it, but I just never really understood that graduate school is a choice and that choice is completely yours. I could have gone for architecture or floral design, but what I wanted to study was writing and there are plenty of programs for that.

The other thing the handbook unlocked for me was the idea that different forms of continued education exist. I think people who are familiar with MFAs might immediately think of full-residency schools like Iowa or Michigan, which are incredible, but there are several options that make sense for various stages of your life. 

For me as a full-time professional, discovering the low-residency model – particularly the one offered by my wonderful MFA program at Randolph College – meant I could go to campus twice a year, keep my job and not leave the city where I’d already planted my roots. It was difficult to balance both school and work for sure, but worth every second because I was able to pursue my graduate journey my own way.

Your MFA thesis looked at how social media architecture shapes narrative voice — arguing that writers are being influenced by platform structure whether they acknowledge it or not. Can you tell us a bit more about your perspective on the influence of social media and how you think about it in your personal and professional work?

Social media changed the way we connect with each other, which in tandem changed the way we show up in the world. Everyone knows the crippling anxiety of picking an Instagram caption. And that feeling alone is a symptom of the larger ripple effect these mediums have had on the way we write and speak. Some of the funniest, pithiest people exist on Twitter, and that’s because the platform’s architecture (and its algorithm) required it: until 2017, you had 140 characters to get your point across. What does a limit like that do to society’s sense of humor as a whole? Same thing with TikTok comments: did social media kill the setup-and-punchline combo? In a way, yes. And all of that changed how writers portray characters in their novels or scripts as clever or comedic – their lines are quicker. Snappier. Instant get.

There’s a lot of discussion around attention spans in this same conversation – that people don’t have the wherewithal to absorb large amounts of information anymore – but I would argue that the encoded constraints of each social media platform made that inevitable. I consider it less about our brains being fried by content and more about the platforms being scaffolded this way by design, which has since totally fragmented the way we talk about ourselves or tell stories about each other.

You are currently writing your second novel (or we can say first if you want?) - what’s the hardest won lessons from this pursuit? Anything you’d do differently or wish you had known?

I am! I’m currently writing my second novel because I completed my first and, while I’m so proud of it and garnered such good responses during the querying process, ultimately it’s not always your first book that lands you a literary agent. And luckily I still have several books in mind! 

Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything I would have done differently. Of course, I was hopeful that my querying journey would be “successful” on the first try – but in so many ways it was. I learned from the agents who generously provided feedback and went through a complete revision, which only made my writing stronger. And by the time that was done I had completed my MFA, so I was undeniably the best writer I’ve ever been, especially considering I’d started my first novel in late 2023. 

Honestly, the beginning of that novel to the end of it must read like a pencil sketch to a painted portrait, because I’m a completely different author now. I’ve strengthened my skills, my creative instinct and honed voice over the years – I’m confident that transformation will be evident as I continue writing my second novel.

What books or pieces of writing do you find yourself coming back to? Any topics or authors that are near and dear to you?

I’m really passionate about writing and theory that explore how identity is shaped by all things digital, especially my own as a Black woman who grew up online. I can’t tell you how many accounts I had across every forum and website known to man between 2002 and 2012, so I love digging into why constructing those personas felt so important to me. 

I read a lot of essays and non-fiction that examine life before and after the screen, so writers and scholars like Vauhini Vara, André Block, Jia Tolentino, Tressie McMillan Cottom and many more truly inspire me. I actually just received a copy of Mindy Seu’s Cyberfeminism Index for my birthday and it’s definitely one of my favorite gifts ever.

What do you find yourself saving or archiving in your personal Pinterest boards? Any niche interests or aesthetics you’re drawn to?

I’m not sure how niche it is, but I’m obsessed with art, sport and music festival posters. I’m always wowed by visuals like the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics campaign, all the colorful Biennales and Saut Hermès jumping show art. 

I just love how we as people put as much effort and beauty into the announcement of our creative and physical endeavors as we bring to the events themselves. It sounds saccharine but, to me, they just feel like such beautiful manifestations of our humanity. 

And then of course, I’m always drawn to the web aesthetics of the 2000s – from the more simple fashion magazine sites like Elle.com, which was all frosty blues with serif fonts and italics, to the chaotic and customized sites on Geocities and Angelfire with tons of hyperlinks and flaming logos. It’s such feel-good nostalgia – there’s even a site that picked up in popularity recently called neocities.com, where you can build and explore pages that look a lot like the latter.

You write commercial copy by day and literary fiction by night. Does one contaminate the other — and if so, how do you manage that?

In my head, they are very separate. Commercial copy for me uses a totally different part of my brain – it’s about brevity and punchiness and the copy’s job is to elicit a click or sale, an action that takes you somewhere else. 

Fiction or essays don’t really need to do any of that, in fact, they often require the opposite. I don’t need to be short and clever in my writing, I probably need to be a bit more descriptive and keep you in the world I’m building for quite a while. 

I’ll say that the fiction/essay-writing part is actually harder for me to do because it’s much more personal. Creative writing and commercial copy share an attempt to forge connection via words, but ultimately commercial copy is on behalf of a brand while creative writing is representative of the individual, the author’s story and perspective. That’s a lot scarier, in my opinion. 

But I will say that my copywriting is only made better by being a creative writer: the fear is what makes the words feel real when they finally come out. And the more I push against that fear in my personal practice, the more easily that state of mind is accessed during my 9-5. My copy becomes more vulnerable, more risk-taking, which is much more relatable to the consumer.

What’s one deeply held belief you had in your early years or early career that shaped the way you navigated the world? What’s been the biggest shift in your thinking these days? 

My biggest deeply held belief in my early career was that I could do literally any job. My path to full-time copywriting wasn’t linear because I kept taking on new roles I had little to no “experience” with – I just thought they sounded interesting. Over ten years, I was a brand researcher, a media planner, an events producer, a casting director and a few other side quests. 

I still believe you can transfer any skill you already have to any career you want – it’s about how you pitch it! – and that delusion of sorts has taught me so much about who I am, what my talents are and what truly excites me. It also allowed me to connect with and learn from incredible people across various industries, and I’m grateful to have accumulated that diversity of thought. 

But for a long time, I wished I knew about copywriting sooner – took a more traditional path like going to portfolio school or moving my way up through a creative agency. I thought I’d probably have gotten into the career I love faster, not “wasted all that time.” But I’ve recently realized that exploring every single one of those paths IS what brought me to copywriting. Those pivots and detours were not distractions, but essential to my journey. I wouldn’t have gotten here any other way.

Bonus Round

What’s one thing you have to consciously unlearn every time you sit down to write fiction after a day of writing brand copy?

Summarizing. At school, my mentors would read some of my novel chapters, point out lines and say “why did you move on from this so quickly” or “this should be a scene, not a sentence.” And I have to remind myself that speed is not the name of the game in fiction. Not in the reading experience, not in the writing process. I’m getting better at noticing the areas I need to “sit in” but it’s always something I’m battling against from my brand copy instincts.

If you could remove one phrase from the brand writing lexicon permanently or industry zeitgeist, what would it be?

“Vibecoding.” Everything good takes effort!

What’s your subway hot take?

If you don’t like a book, it’s okay to stop reading it. In fact, you should stop reading it, because why are you punishing yourself?! It doesn’t matter if you’re at page 2 or 200, there is no book police and the author is not coming for you. Put that book down!

Favorite personal mantra?

Everything will work out. It has to.

My last question: if you could switch lives with any person in the world, who would it be?

This is so corny to say, but I wouldn’t want to switch with anyone because I like their lives for them and mine for me! Haha.

‍

About Abby:

Abby Adesanya is a Nigerian-American writer exploring the development of persona, cultural identity and life in the digital era. Her work has been published in The Cut, Mashable, Polygon, Business Insider, POPSUGAR and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Fiction from Randolph College, received the Zakiya Dalila Harris Scholarship from the Northern California Writers’ Retreat and is an alumna of the Tin House Workshop.